Carving Your Path: What Mount Rushmore Reminded Me About the Long Game

I recently had the opportunity to visit Mount Rushmore and let me start by saying it was truly amazing and inspiring. I walked around the base, looked up at the faces, took in the breathtaking scenery around it, and learned its history and how it was actually built. If you'd like to learn more about that history, I've included a short summary at the end of this article.

Later that evening, as I flipped through the photos on my phone, I thought more about what an accomplishment creating it was and reflected on what I could learn from such an audacious goal and apply to my own work and life.

Every day, I have the privilege of working with leaders who have a gap they need help closing, whether in growth, performance, or exit strategy. Most hold impressive goals for what they and their organizations aspire to become. To get there, they often have to overcome significant short-term challenges to reap long-term reward. Mount Rushmore definitely fits into that category.

As I looked at my first picture, one of the first thoughts from the day that jumped out at me was this: two years into carving the mountain, they blasted Thomas Jefferson off of it.

Not a small mistake. This was a face, hundreds of feet up, that had taken nearly two years to shape. Gutzon Borglum, the main sculptor, and his crew had been carving it beside Washington when they hit granite that wouldn't hold detail. There were cracks and weakness where they needed strength to ensure long term success. So, Borglum made the hard call, and the powder men erased Jefferson from the rock. They started Jefferson over on the other side of Washington, where the stone was sound.

It wasn't the four finished faces that got me. It was the two years they were willing to throw away to ensure long term success.

Because that's the long game, and almost nobody signs up for what it actually costs.

We love the finished monument. Fourteen years compressed into a single photograph. What we skip is that for most of those fourteen years, Mount Rushmore didn't look like anything. It looked like a mountain with scaffolding on it. It looked like a budget problem. During the Depression, the money vanished more than once, and the crew kept carving with whatever Borglum could scrape together, matched dollar for dollar, one appropriation at a time.

Every big goal I've helped a leader chase has that same shape. The vision is clear. The granite is not.

You will have to move your Jefferson.

The plan meets the material, and the material wins. The market shifts. The technology you bet on doesn't hold detail. The hire who was going to anchor the whole thing cracks under load. When that happens, the instinct is to force it, to keep carving the face you already started because you've sunk two years into it. Borglum didn't. He read the rock, admitted the position was wrong, and relocated the goal without abandoning it. Jefferson still got carved. Just not where the original drawing said he would.

That's not failure. That's integrity and working the problem.

Innovation clears the rock. It doesn't carve the face.

Here's the detail that surprised me most: roughly ninety percent of Mount Rushmore was removed with dynamite. In the hands of Borglum's powder men, the blasting was accurate to within a few inches of the final surface. Then jackhammers, then chisels, then a fine polish for the last few inches of granite.  Sounds a bit like AI today, doesn’t it? Where we tweak and adjust the heavy lifting completed by many AI tools.

We tend to think innovation is the finish. It's usually the blast. It's the thing that clears eighty tons of rock you'd otherwise chip away for a decade. But nobody remembers a pile of debris. The face still has to be carved by hand, slowly, after the smoke clears. Use the new tool to move the mountain, but don't expect it to do the patient and thoughtful work for you.

Patience isn't passive. It's the discipline of not rushing the part that will kill you.

Four hundred people worked that mountain across fourteen years, dangling in bosun chairs over a sheer face, handling explosives. Not one of them died. That statistic isn't luck. It's what happens when careful preparation outranks speed, every single day, for over a decade. The long game rewards the people who refuse to trade the durable outcome for the fast one and value the people that make it happen.

Build it to outlast you.

And here's the part that should land hardest for anyone building something. Borglum never saw it finished. He died in March 1941, months before completion. His son Lincoln finished the work that October. Close to 400 million people have visited Mount Rushmore since its completion.

If your vision only survives as long as you're the one holding the chisel, it isn't a monument. It's a pile of rubble. The goal worth chasing is the one you've built well enough (documented, delegated, believed in by the people around you) that has enduring value and gets finished even if you're not there to make the last cut.

Finish the essential thing and be flexible.

They never carved the presidents from the waist up, the way Borglum originally drew it. The time and money ran out at the shoulders. And it doesn't matter at all. Four faces became one of the most recognized images on earth. Sometimes the scoped-down version of the dream is the one that lasts. Finishing the essential thing beats perfecting the whole thing.

The point

So whatever mountain you're standing in front of right now: the vision is the easier part. Expect to move your Jefferson. Use the blast to clear the rock, then carve by hand. Don't rush the cut that matters. And build it so it outlasts you.

A Brief History of Mount Rushmore

A quick summary for anyone who knows the four faces and would like to learn more about the fourteen years behind them.

Mount Rushmore began as a tourism idea. In 1923, South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson proposed carving figures into the Black Hills to draw visitors to the state, and he recruited sculptor Gutzon Borglum to lead it.

Borglum reframed the concept from regional Western heroes into four presidents of national significance: Washington for the nation's founding, Jefferson for its expansion through the Louisiana Purchase, Lincoln for its preservation through the Civil War, and Theodore Roosevelt for its emergence as a modern power.

Drilling began in October 1927. Over the next fourteen years, a crew of roughly 400 workers removed close to 450,000 tons of granite, about ninety percent of it with dynamite, then finished the faces by hand.

Progress was repeatedly interrupted by funding shortages during the Great Depression and forced to adapt to unstable rock, most famously when a nearly finished Jefferson had to be blasted away and restarted on the other side of Washington. Gutzon Borglum died in March 1941, months before the work was done, and his son Lincoln Borglum oversaw the final stages.

The memorial was declared complete on October 31, 1941. Borglum's original vision of head-to-waist figures and a carved history of the nation was never realized, cut short by time, money, and the approach of World War II.

Timeline of Construction

• 1923: Doane Robinson proposes a monumental carving in the Black Hills to attract tourism.

• 1925: Gutzon Borglum commits to the project and reframes the subject as four U.S. presidents.

• August 1927: President Coolidge dedicates the site; drilling and carving begin that October.

• 1930: Washington's face is dedicated, the first of the four completed.

• 1936: Jefferson's face is dedicated, after being relocated to the other side of Washington due to poor rock.

• 1937: Lincoln's face is dedicated.

• 1939: Roosevelt's face is dedicated.

• March 1941: Gutzon Borglum dies; his son Lincoln Borglum takes over the final work.

• October 31, 1941: Work halts and the memorial is declared complete after fourteen years.

References and Citations

1. “The Making of Mount Rushmore.” Smithsonian Magazine, 2013. Accessed August 19, 2026. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-making-of-mount-rushmore-121886182/

2. Encyclopedia Britannica, The Editors of. “How Was Mount Rushmore Built?” Britannica. Accessed August 19, 2026. https://www.britannica.com/art/How-Was-Mount-Rushmore-Built

3. National Geographic. “Mount Rushmore's Heartbreaking, Controversial History.” Accessed August 19, 2026. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/the-strange-and-controversial-history-of-mount-rushmore

4. “84 Years Later: The Making of Mount Rushmore.” TIME. Accessed August 19, 2026. https://time.com/2946741/mount-rushmore-construction-photos/

5. “Construction of Mount Rushmore.” Wikipedia. Accessed August 19, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_Mount_Rushmore

6. Travel South Dakota. “Mount Rushmore: Dynamite Facts and Surprising History.” Accessed August 19, 2026. https://www.travelsouthdakota.com/trip-ideas/surprising-facts-about-mount-rushmore

Images and Media

Cover image, Mount Rushmore, SD, photo taken, Greg Valyou, on July 24, 2026.

AI Tools

This article was written by Greg Valyou, a real person. In addition to drawing on my own experience, knowledge, and research, I used AI tools to augment the process.

1. Claude (Anthropic). https://claude.ai. Paid account, Apple Store application for Mac. Accessed August 17, 2026.

   1. Researched and verified the historical details of Mount Rushmore's construction, helped draft and refine the article from my concept and direction, compiled the source list, and formatted the document.